


my skin is rough, but it can be cleansed

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Series: can't pretend [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Rule 63, so uh this is definitely moving in the direction of bellamy/raven/clarke whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2805269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aurora had been the only one to ever guess, to ever think; the boy who called you <i>dyke</i> probably didn’t even know what the word meant, but you knew, you’d clutched at these fragments of your history and wondered if you were the last queer in space, if humanity’s survival had driven the rest of you into hiding like you had for so many centuries. </p><p>“I should never have let you read Sappho,” Aurora had muttered. Like that would have changed anything that mattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my skin is rough, but it can be cleansed

**Author's Note:**

> couple things!
> 
> 1\. super sorry it has been so long, finals happened! i survived 50 pages of essays and here i am, queerer than ever  
> 2\. stunningly appropriate title courtesy of tom odell's can't pretend, as is every fucking title in this verse  
> 3\. this is still the bellamy "what a gr9 lesbian" blake verse btw  
> 4\. you know that tumblr text post, that's like "how can i make each day a gayer one than before?" that is my goal with this series. each installment will be gayer than the last until we reach the final peak of ultimate gayness and the world is made anew by rainbows and unicorns.  
> 5\. finals took a lot out of me, can you tell

“Wait—!” she says; the first thing she says to you. “Don’t open the door, the radiation could kill us all—”

You spare her a glance, take her measure: the Ark’s princess, with her golden hair and sweet blue eyes, locked up just after Octavia for reasons no one knew. You read fear into her features, and think neither of Aurora’s tactics will work for you now. You cannot defeat the radiation through force of will, and everyone knows they could die from its power.

“If the radiation is strong enough to kill us, we’re already dead,” you say grimly. You’re doing as much as you can to avoid thinking of Shumway, shoving you gracelessly into an empty seat, the blood spatter you hastily scrubbed from your hands, your face, the gun tucked into the small of your back. You fight the urge to check and make sure the safety is on; you don’t have that leisure, not with a hundred criminals and your sister to protect, your sister you have not seen for a year.

She’ll hate you, you think; locked up for your carelessness, alone and orphaned as quickly as you, your fragile family shattered in a solar flare. You’d deserve it. 

 

 

Murphy gone, you stick closer with your remaining allies: Miller, Monty, and you’re — working on Raven. She’s one of the few people who actually knows what she’s doing, who has an invaluable skill. You need her on your side, or at least willing to work with you; she and Clarke have an unlikely friendship, and they could wrest power from your hands if they choose.

(They won’t, of course they won’t; Clarke will do what she thinks is best for the hundred, and though you’re far more selfish, she considers you best for now; in this at least, she chose you over Spacewalker. And Raven — Raven has better ways to occupy her time than politics, and you aim to keep it that way.)

You call them to you, the boys who are useful and actually _helpful,_ an unusual quality for those sent down: Monty, your agro-engineer, Miller, who is so, so good at organizing needs and abilities productively, who you trust to follow you from respect, not fear. 

“Clarke found a beehive,” you tell them, and watch Monty’s eyes light up. Miller waits for you to reiterate what Clarke had told you, and you — never above playing dirty — give them each a piece of the comb she’d extracted. You outline your thoughts: how you need to build a hive, make sure that the hundred will know how to work around the hive. It’ll be too valuable to keep outside the wall, and you need people not to panic at the bees.

“Bees,” Monty breathes. _“Honeybees._ Bellamy — we could grow stuff, fruit and vegetables, even flowers —”

“Medicinal flowers,” Miller says, “and herbs. I’ll get a list from Clarke.”

“Excuse me,” Monty says indignantly, already chasing after him, and you roll your eyes, feeling — precariously — as though something might go right for once.

 

 

“Bella?”

You almost can’t bring yourself to face her, but it’s Octavia, your sister, for whom you’ve given everything and would again.

She pushes through the crowd, past the golden girl, the Ark’s darling-until-she-wasn’t, stops in front of you, staring. She looks as though she can’t believe it’s you. You know how that feels.

“Look at you,” you murmur, voice rough and low, “how big you’ve grown.” Has it only been a year?

 _“Bellamy,”_ she says, and sweeps into you, hugging you tighter than you remember she used to, her forehead fitting under your chin the way you thought it would just days before the masquerade, looking at the lines of her body evening out of their pre-teen coltishness. 

You hug her back, thinking that nothing can tear her from your arms again, and want to weep into her hair, but all eyes are on you both, and you can already hear the mutters among the remaining ninety-seven. Down here, you know, it’s all about performance, and for once you think you can thank your mother.

It’s thanks to her that you’ve been performing your entire life.

 

 

“We’re back, bitches!” Octavia screams into the sunlight — _sunlight,_ could you ever imagine it so kind on your face — and the hundred scream with her.

But you don’t, too busy tracking the others, and neither does Clarke Griffin — of course you know her name — standing at the edge of the doorway. She’s doing the exact same thing as you, you realize, watching her eyes sweep closely over the hundred, watching them run, dispersing across this brand new world. There’s the anxiety and concern you expected to see in her features, this girl whose first words had been in defense of the hundred, but there’s something calculating, too.

She catches you staring, and tilts her chin defiantly before stomping down the gangway, unfolding a map as she goes. 

 

 

“Twenty miles of radiation-soaked forest between us and our next meal,” Clarke says, and, “do you want the people you love to think you’re dead?”

There are many things you envy about her, watching her work the delinquents. She’s good — could have them eating out of her hand in minutes, privilege or not, but there’s more on the line for you than just human survival. Octavia; your crimes, your sexuality. You need to distract the hundred, make yourself above reproach, and they don’t like Clarke anymore than you do, for all that they’re listening to her right now.

“Let the privileged do the work for once,” you sneer, and listen as the hundred take up your words.

The princess, to her credit, just sets her jaw, folds her map. “Come on,” she says brusquely to the Spacewalker.

Octavia goes with them, wrenching her arm from your hand. You try not to let it hurt, and fail. 

 

 

“So,” Miller says, crouching down beside you where you’re scrutinizing the clumsy model of camp you’ve built. “Raven and Monty have thoughts.”

“Of course they do,” you say.

“We’re too close to winter to do a lot now,” Miller continues, as if you hadn’t spoken, “but we can prep for next year. Pick a spot for a garden, start planting tubers. Monty thinks he and Raven could rig a greenhouse in the spring, but we shouldn’t bring the hive in yet. We might not be able to keep them alive through the winter, and then —” He shrugs.

You rock back on your heels. 

“Okay,” you say at last. “How are we doing on preparing the dropship for winter?”

“Good,” Miller says honestly. “The door’s coming along well. We're working on insulating the walls; Monroe's got the kids making screens for inside. Privacy will be important inside.”

“Yeah,” you say, sandpaper dry, and Miller grins at you, eyes crinkling in the way that told you he was kind from the start — a criminal, but one who’d been locked away for trying to get a toy for the girl living two cells down. Kind, and quiet, and willing to do what it took; and for some reason, some completely inexplicable reason, loyal to you from the start. 

“Yeah,” he says back, and you’re both thinking of the awkwardness of Finn and Raven, Finn and Clarke, the girls who for some fucking reason are interested in Jasper and the rest of the useless, the boys who still don’t get that consent must be given. Your knuckles ache from punching a kid out just this morning; you rub them absently, and Miller notices.

“You should get Clarke to look at them,” he says. You shrug the words off.

“They’re fine,” you say.

“Sure, but maybe you just want a little attention from the princess?”

Your breath catches, your mouth dries; you _never_ learned to fucking hide this, not fucking once, because no one ever fucking asked or assumed, it was never even a _possibility_ until the ground, and the Ark wouldn’t have called you in for a fertility test for some months yet, and _no one would have thought this —_

“Hey,” Miller says, eyes wide. “Bellamy — I’m sorry, are you —? Breathe, c’mon, people will notice.”

You breathe. The world clears, focuses. 

“Sorry, man,” Miller says quietly, “I should’ve let you get there yourself.”

“I’ve never told anyone,” you blurt, breathless, low and ripped-raw. 

“Oh,” Miller says. “Oh.”

 

 

Aurora had been the only one to ever guess, to ever think; the boy who called you _dyke_ probably didn’t even know what the word meant, but you knew, you’d clutched at these fragments of your history and wondered if you were the last queer in space, if humanity’s survival had driven the rest of you into hiding like you had for so many centuries. 

“I should never have let you read Sappho,” Aurora had muttered. Like that would have changed anything that mattered.

 

 

Finn sets up a parley with the Grounder queen behind yours and Clarke’s backs, because fucking Finn thinks he knows better than anyone else what is needed, and you do need peace, you know that, you’re not an idiot. It was something that you and Clarke needed to arrange, to mete out between yourselves, to talk over with Raven and Monty and Miller and Octavia.

(How your sister, how you all have grown.)

Instead, Finn says _now or never, just you, Clarke,_ and Clarke says _bring guns,_ and so you bring Raven and Jasper, because the kid’s not half bad with a gun. Octavia’s there already, and Miller’s running camp in your absence — the only one you really trust to do so — and, fuck, the people and players are all here, accounted for, and every single one of them is on a different wavelength.

Except, maybe, you and Clarke.

 

 

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Miller says quietly; “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

You breathe. “I know,” you say, and clap him on the shoulder. “Just — you took me by surprise.”

“And —” he exhales, sharp, thin. “It’s not just you, y’know?”

You pause, hold tight, look him in the eyes. “Thanks,” you say, absolutely serious.

He grins at you, a little shaky. “Go see Clarke,” he says. 

 

 

You expect a lecture, frankly, when you duck into the medbay that night, waving your bruised fingers.

Clarke stares at you for three silent seconds, then, inexplicably, mutters, “You asshole,” and goes to rifle through the apothecary she and Monty have been patching together with Octavia’s — and Lincoln’s — help. 

“What was I supposed to do, Clarke,” you say; you’re too tired to make it a question, too tired to want to fight. Something is always going on, going wrong, and you — you could use a day off, honestly, not that you’ll ever get one.

She comes back, a jar of oil and some clean rags in hand. “I heard what happened,” she says curtly, “and I can’t believe you would think I’d be mad about that.”

“Oh,” you say.

“Yes, 'oh',” she says. There’s a lot of that going around today. 

She cleans your hand, the abrasions, gently. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your hand,” she mutters.

“C’mon, princess,” you say, a little drowsy. You always feel — easier, around Clarke, which, given…everything, makes no sense. “'Course I know how to throw a punch.”

The oily salve she spreads over your knuckles stings at first, but numbs; like chewing fresh spearmint, when Monty and Octavia had found some and returned triumphantly. You sigh.

“Balm of Gilead,” Clarke murmurs: “poplar buds. We’re lucky we found them when we did.” She wraps your hand carefully. You wonder where she keeps finding all these rags. How does she find the time, the energy, to be medic and leader both? You’ve got to assign someone to help her. She ties off the wrapping neatly, but her touch lingers, her hands slow to leave. Her eyes are clear, serious, speculative as she meets yours.

 

 

Raven leans close to you as you both watch the bridge, Clarke’s hair dulled beneath a slate-grey sky, the Grounder queen cold and imperious and looking like Persephone, wildling queen of hell. You notice her warmth, of course you do: it’s cold, she’s always been stunningly attractive, and the pressure is so unlike her that you can’t not notice. With the exception of Finn, Raven keeps everyone at an arm’s distance; you wonder what it says about you, that she’s suddenly inside your space, unafraid.

“Grounder princess looks pissed,” she murmurs; you look at her sidelong.

“Our princess has that effect,” you answer, meaning _ours_ as _the hundred’s_ but also not: there’s something potential between the three of you, how you need both Clarke and Raven to survive this world, your daughter of Leda and your Prometheus. Between them, you don’t know who you are, what role you play: for all your childhood promise, you are neither Mars nor Mercury; you are simply the girl with the gun, staining your hands with stars’ blood to keep hers clean. 

Three hundred fell: you will carry them the rest of your days, you think. 

Raven is watching you speculatively when you glance back to her, and what is it about her that makes you think she sees you for exactly what you are? Exactly as does Clarke? 

“Our princess,” she echoes, or you think she does, because at that moment Jasper screams and shoots, _they’re in the trees,_ and it’s all gone to hell.

 

 

You all get back to the dropship more or less intact, though something’s fractured between Raven and Finn by the time it looms before them, and you sense the break is irreparable. Raven slips into your tent and leaves you lonelier than before; Raven prepares a bag to make it on her own.

“You can’t,” you say, mustering every ounce of conviction you’ve ever had: “we need you.”

She looks at you with the fierce kind of wanting you know so well — the wanting to be recognized for yourself, to be brought home, to be a home for others. On the Ark, she was the youngest zero-g mechanic in fifty-two years, and you a disgraced janitor; here, you are a leader, and she the means to keep your people safe. You tell her this, watch the way the tension eases in her shoulders.

“Radios,” she says, “walkie-talkies; if we can communicate, we can coordinate.”

 

 

“That thing has survived a nuclear war and ninety-seven years of bad weather,” you tell her. She smiles, bares her teeth like a wolf.

“It won’t survive me,” Raven says, a promise. 

 

 

“Be careful,” Clarke says abruptly, hands stilling on yours. 

_I need you._

You stand from the medbay table, rising taller than she could ever be, even on tiptoes; her hands catch at your arms for balance, and she doesn’t step back, and doesn’t break eye contact.

“I will,” you say, husky, hesitating. She doesn’t move. 

Slowly, you raise your hand, cup the curve of her jaw, the rise of her cheekbone. She leans into your touch, and her hand settles at your hip, thumb pressing up under the hem of your shirt to skin. 

“I mean it,” she says quietly, and you get it: she’ll always patch you up, but she needs not to worry that she’ll have to; she needs to know that you can take care of yourself, and it’s not that she doesn’t know that so much as she wants one person in this camp that she hasn’t dragged back from death’s door more determinedly than Orpheus ever could.

“Okay,” you whisper, “okay,” and the word is barely off your lips before she’s moving up, pulling you down, and pressing her mouth gently to yours. You’ve dreamed of this moment, of course you have, tasted honey on your fingers and thought of her, but it’s still so unexpected that you don’t know how to react. Distantly, something about it reminds you of Atom, how she smoothed his hair and sang death softly in; you almost want to look for the blade, but this is Clarke, and you trust her. You think you might not know how to distrust her, at this point. You need her more than she needs you, this god-girl with Death as her shadow, you the fallen caesar with more blood on your hands than you’ll ever be able to wipe clean.

She pulls away, her hand echoing yours on your jaw, and keeps you from following. Something has changed between you, not for the worse but not the way you wanted, either; she was looking for something and didn’t find it. You should have known better.

 

 

“I am become Death,” Clarke whispers, “Destroyer of Worlds.”

The mushroom cloud, Raven’s promise, looms monstrously in the distance. You cannot take your eyes away.

“I know who Oppenheimer is,” you say, and feel her eyes on you.

**Author's Note:**

> *chinhands* so how've you been


End file.
